For any organization, be it an institution in the service industry, in the manufacturing industry, or in the government, knowing its competence level is essential for determining areas of deficiencies and opportunities for improvement, for assessing compatibility with partners, or for comparisons with competitors. The term “competence” relates to sufficiency and adequacy of quality, expertise, skill, and sophistication in various aspects of an organization including aspects relating to management of resources and know-how, aspects relating to management of documentation and information, and aspects relating to processes, workflows, and organizational set-up.
While there are almost as many methodologies for assessing an organization as there are business consultants, the results provided by these methodologies typically consists in lengthy and complex reports. Generally, reading these reports is time consuming if not difficult. Consequently, the reports are often not read completely and the result of the assessment is not communicated clearly to representatives of the respective organization. Moreover, based on such reports, it is very difficult to compare objectively assessments of different (competitive/peer) organizations.
Typically, organizations comprise multiple organizational units with different levels and areas of responsibilities and expertise. Generally, conventional methods for assessing competence of an organization fail to produce results, which make possible direct comparison of the competence levels of all organizational units involved.